Well it's been a little bit since I posted my progress. Everything has been pretty smooth sailing and about ready finish it up soon. Built the firebox out of 3/16 and welded it up to the cook chamber. Not a welder by any means but I'm pretty happy with most of my welds. Some are crappy and got ground down others looked good enough to leave! All and all I like it! Here are some pics. Let me know what you all think, if there is anything I'm missing. Hoping to run a test burn this week.

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Finished up my first smoker this week. Couldn't be happier with the finished product. Thank you to everyone that answered my questions and gave advice. And the fine people on Facebook too. Fired it up yesterday to see how she cooked. It was awesome to see smoke rolling out! It flowed freaking awesome ( based on my newby prespective) nice light smoke almost hard to see. I followed the Feldon calculator for my build, glad I did! I did three Boston butts all of them were awesome!
Thank you all again and Happy New Year.

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Hello,
I've been using the crap out of my smoker since i built it. Amazing how much joy I'm getting out of cooking meat! If my wife knew i would get this excited while cooking dinner i would have been given one 20 years ago!
I'm going to make some tuning plates to balance out the temps from end to end. Should they run the whole length of the cook chamber? I am planning of several plates 4"-6" wide. The gap between getting progressively larger towers the end. Or should I do a single plate and drill holes?
What is anyone's take on this?
Thanks

I would make them as you stated 6” wide with the first one against the wall on the FB end with about 1/2” gap after it and 3/4” between the next then start opening them up 1/2” more each time. Leave the last 2 out. I say all that because your stack is on the opposite end of your FB. That is fine but I wouldn’t want to force the flow anymore than that. You will get the benefit of radiant heat from the tuning plates so don’t be too concerned about the small gap.